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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles. See "Published Works" on the web version for citations.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Chimpanzees With Nukes

Behold, in all its self-destructive glory, how Russia is their own worst enemy. A true foreign plot against Russia would put exactly who is now ruling Russia into power to wreck the country.

But note this from Strategypage's tour of the clusterfuck that Russia has created for itself:

Russia can downplay this [economic mess] in the state controlled media but without all that foreign and Russian capital the economy cannot grow. Inflation and unemployment remain high and there is not much the government can do about it. Eventually the growing economic problems will overwhelm the nationalistic mass media campaign.

Why will the economic problems overwhelm the nationalism? Why wouldn't Putin ramp up the nationalism--perhaps not even intending a short but glorious war, but by going to the brink on the assumption that President Obama will back down first--to smother the economic discontent?

As I've noted before, sanctions are often irrelevant to international relations. If weak enough, the target shrugs it off or endures the pain.

But if the sanctions are--alone or in combination with low oil prices and stupidity--harsh enough to inflict real pain, the target may well think of sanctions not as an alternative to war but a part of a war being waged on them.

And if the sanctions are effectively a siege and a weapon of war, why would the Russians refrain from using kinetic means of war more to their advantage to fight back?

As Japan did on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese response to our oil embargo was to launch a wide-ranging war in Asia and the Pacific.

So the Russians could go to war--or risk war--to increase the power of nationalism to support the government in the face of economic problems that erode support for the government.

Barely sentient chimps with nukes, they seem these days. Have a super sparkly day.

#WhyRussiaCan'tHaveNiceThings

UPDATE: If you sense utter contempt for the Russians, you're right.

I had hoped that post-Soviet Russia would join the West after discarding communism as the failure it is. While NATO has moved east at the request of the former outposts of the Soviet empire, NATO has disarmed and has not moved its forces east. NATO posed no military threat to Russia. Period. Despite loud Russian accusations about the NATO threat.

And while Russia's complaint that the West is seeking a "color revolution" in Russia is ludicrous--sorry Russia, we really didn't think much about you until you invaded Crimea--if Russia's autocrats are threatened by popular sentiment for freedom, you have to concede that the very existence of a democratic West is a threat to autocratic Russia which has people who would rather not live without freedom.

And they have nukes. So flinging poo is the least of our problems with these people. I keep some hope that when the last Soviets die out that Russia will behave like a normal country. I wonder if that is a futile hope. Russians may be their own worst enemy.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.

Of course, it is quite possible that my failure to use Facebook and Twitter has handicapped me in getting an audience. Or it may be an additional issue. I may be a blogosaur!